What Do the Codes on Cuban Cigar Boxes Mean?

25/07/2026 — collector, tout-sur-le-cigare

You have probably already noticed, but all boxes of Cuban cigars feature a specific code beneath the mentions “Hecho en Cuba” and “Totalmente a mano”. Composed of a 3-letter acronym and a date, this code is one of the elements used to verify the authenticity of a box of habanos. So what does it correspond to, and is it important for consumers to know how to decipher it?

The code on Cuban cigar boxes: an identification story

The code found on the outside bottom of cigar boxes includes a 3-letter acronym that corresponds to the name of the cigar factory and the date (month and year) on which the cigars were packed. It therefore makes it possible to identify where the cigars were made and to put effective solutions in place if a defect is found.

It was in 1985 that the first codes appeared, driven by Francisco Padron, the director of Cubatabaco. Before then, only the inscription “Hecho en Cuba” was branded onto each cigar box produced on the island. It was therefore impossible to identify with certainty the place where a box had been produced.

In the 1980s, the reputation of Cuban cigars was indeed tarnished by various scandals related to the quality of their manufacture. The most famous of them all took place in 1988, when Zino Davidoff even went so far as to burn thousands of Cuban cigars in public. Francisco Pardon himself would later acknowledge in an interview with the magazine Cigar Aficionado in November 1992 that “We (Cubatabaco) made a mistake at that time. We were too flexible with our quality control[1]”.

This identification of the factories was therefore part of a process of modernizing the Cuban cigar industry and aimed to optimize the response given if a manufacturing defect was discovered. It also made it possible to assess a factory’s performance over time.

The addition of the box date is also an important element of the code found on habanos boxes. It makes it possible to determine the harvest and aging period of the tobacco. With the exception of special-production cigars, most Cuban cigars available on the market are in fact made from tobaccos that have undergone a processing period of between 18 and 24 months. As a reminder, once the harvest has been carried out, the tobacco leaves are dried for between 25 and 50 days and then fermented for between 25 and 90 days. They then undergo an aging process that varies according to the producers and vitolas, but is generally between 6 months and 2 years. A box stamped “AGO 19” (August 2019) thus makes it possible to infer that the tobacco used to make the cigars was probably harvested in 2017. Of course, you will also need to know the precise production methods of a cigar in order to know the exact harvest date.

[1] Francisco Padron, Cubatabaco,  Marvin R. Shanken, Cigar Aficionado, Spring 93.

The factory codes on cigar boxes: confidential information

Unlike the date, which allows the consumer to know the harvest year of the tobacco used to make the cigars, the factory code was never intended to be known by consumers. This information is in fact strictly reserved for Habanos S.A. as part of its quality control.

From 1985 to 1998, the codes used to identify the cigar manufacturing factories remained the same. The coding system was also relatively basic:

  • El Laguito : EL
  • Briones Montoto (Romeo&Julieta) : BM
  • Jose Marti (H. Upmann) : JM
  • Francisco Perez German (Partagas) : FPG

Until the late 1990s, Cuba’s borders were almost entirely closed to foreign tourists, which had the effect of limiting the risk of consumer interference. But from that period on, the first tourists allowed to visit the factories discovered the meaning of these codes and revealed it on the site www.cigarnexus.com. Some tourists then did not hesitate to go complain directly to the factory when their cigars had defects.

Since 1998, the codes used to identify cigar manufacturing factories have therefore been changed regularly, and only a few experts are able to decipher them. They are chosen by an algorithm, and a single factory sometimes has several codes at the same time.

Before the year 2000, the box date of cigars was also kept secret. The first code system put in place matched a sequence of letters (NIVELACUSO) with numbers (1234567890). Codes of 3 or 4 letters thus displayed the month then the year of production.

Example: NOSU = 10/98 (October 1998).

Since the year 2000, the date has been clearly displayed in the “MMYY” format. The month codes use the first 3 letters of each month in Spanish.

  • ENE – enero – January
  • FEB – febrero – February
  • MAR – marzo – March
  • ABR – abril – April
  • MAY – mayo – May
  • JUN – junio – June
  • JUL – julio – July
  • AGO – agosto – August
  • SET – setiembre – September
  • OCT – octubre – October
  • NOV – noviembre – November
  • DIC – diciembre – December

If the date printed on cigar boxes can give you an additional clue about the quality of your cigars, the factory code is, on the other hand, a logistical element intended solely for Cuban regulatory authorities. The presence of this code is therefore a guarantee of the authenticity of your cigars, just like the warranty seal, the holographic label, the import guarantees (for cigars sold outside HABANO & ALMA stores), and the hot-stamped inscriptions “Habanos s.a.”, “Hecho en Cuba” and “Totalmente a mano”.

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